9/11 Family Member Lorie Van Auken holding up the JICI showing redacted pages on CNN.

Jon Gold
4/24/2016

You may have heard of the 28 redacted pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11. They have been redacted for years, and the 9/11 families and others have been fighting for their release since the day it was announced they were redacted. According to people like former Senator Bob Graham, those pages talk about alleged Saudi Government support for the hijackers.

Recently, there was a short segment on 60 Minutes about the pages. This resulted in a much needed push for the release of the 28 redacted pages. When Obama first came into office, it was reported that he told 9/11 Family Member Kristen Breitweiser “that he was willing to make the pages public.” A few years later, according to 9/11 Family Member Bill Doyle, Obama told him “Bill, I will get them released.”

Many times throughout Obama’s Presidency, we have seen him protect the Saudis against the 9/11 Families who want their day in court. Right now, he is threatening to veto a bill called JASTA that would finally give the families that day in court.

The 28 pages were originally classified by the Bush Administration “for reasons of national security.” Obama said that “Jim Clapper, our director of national intelligence, has been going through to make sure that whatever it is that is released is not gonna compromise some major national security interest of the United States.”

We have heard from many people who have read them say that there is nothing in those pages that would affect national security. Rep. Walter Jones said “there's nothing in it about national security.” Former Sen. Bob Graham has said “they do not affect national security.”

“I think it’s implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many didn’t have a high school education, could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,”

There continues to be some limited interest in the many links between Saudi Arabia and the crimes of 9/11. Although many of those links point back to powerful people in the U.S., the mainstream media tends to focus the story on Saudi Arabia alone. That seems to be due to the fact that control of oil and gas resources in the Middle East is what really drives terrorism. Nonetheless, its important to continue revealing Saudi connections to 9/11 because they can help us understand what really happened. One very interesting link is that Stratesec, the security company for the World Trade Center and other 9/11-impacted facilities, held its annual meetings in offices leased by Saudi Arabia. That fact highlights the glaring lack of investigation into the men who ran Stratesec.

Without a doubt, Firefighters are among the most respected public servants in any community.

“North Texans for 9/11 Truth” would like to encourage individuals and groups to help in delivering the Ae911Truth message to their local Fire Stations. ANYONE can do something. ANYONE can get the word out about 9/11 to their local Firefighters.

Below is our “Project – Fire Station Packets” which may give other people some ideas on what they can personally do. From our interactions with local fire stations, we have discovered that Firefighters are very receptive to this information.

Many entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons, which describe a variety of events relating to the 9/11 attacks, with numerous entries revealing new details of the events of September 11, 2001.

Training Exercises Were Held in the Run-Up to 9/11

Several new timeline entries describe training exercises that were held in the years and months before 9/11. In May 1998, an exercise was held at the Pentagon called Cloudy Office, which was based around the scenario of a terrorist attack at the Pentagon involving chemical weapons.

In February 2001, the FBI's Washington, DC, field office started sponsoring training with local fire department and law enforcement commanders on how emergency response workers and the FBI should coordinate their actions if there was a terrorist attack in the Washington area. Just two or three days before 9/11, the Washington field office and various other agencies held an exercise in Northern Virginia, based around the scenario of a terrorist attack involving chemical weapons.

And United Airlines, which had two of its planes hijacked on September 11, held a surprise exercise 12 days before 9/11 in which employees were led to believe one of their planes had crashed.

When people ask me what more can be done to achieve 9/11 truth and justice, I tell them to spend less time calling for a new investigation and more time investigating. Even without subpoena power, independent investigators can make a lot of progress. To help with that effort, here are three steps for an independent investigation and an objective way to evaluate suspects in the 9/11 crimes.

The first step is to ask specific, well-formulated questions. What do we need to know? We need to know things like how explosives got into the WTC, how the North American air defenses failed, how the U.S. chain of command and communication systems failed, how the alleged hijackers got away with so much, and how the planes were hijacked.

Here are examples of specific questions that will help answer these questions.

What more can we learn from the official accounts about transponder and autopilot use on 9/11?

Who was invited to the explosive disposal/terrorism meeting at WTC 7 on the morning 9/11 and what was the agenda?

What do the strip clubs, bars, and other businesses frequented by the alleged hijackers have in common?

The second step is to collect information that might help to answer the questions. Good sources of information include the following.

It also helps to interview people who have detailed knowledge about the events. Most of the people who were present at the time of the attacks and during the official investigations are still alive and some of them will answer questions.

We are honoured to speak with Charles and Mary Ann Strange, whose son Michael—Cryptologic Technician and Petty Officer (Collection) First Class Michael Strange—was tragically killed in a suspicious helicopter shoot-down in Afghanistan.

Michael had served as a member of SEAL Team Six when it was reported to have assassinated Osama bin Laden at the beginning of May 2011. But on August 6, 2011 Michael was killed—along with fourteen other members of SEAL Team Six, two other Navy SEALs, thirteen US Army and US Navy support personnel, seven Afghan commandos, one Afgan interpreter and one US military working dog—when the CH-47D Chinook helicopter in which they were travelling was shot down by the Taliban.

But this was no ordinary tragedy in the horrific course of warfare; it was a deeply suspicious event. And many of the families who lost loved ones that day continue to press their catalogue of serious questions that the authorities seem unwilling to answer.